Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

March 13, 2023 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

01:30:49

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #608

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Good afternoon, folks.
	Welcome to the podcast for Monday the 13th of March 2023.
	I'm joined by Dan, and today we're going to be discussing why the banks are collapsing again, how Gary Lineker now owns this country, and what conspiracy theories are actually wrong.
	I haven't got anything to talk about in advance, so let's talk about the collapsed Silicon Valley Bank.
	I've never even heard of Silicon Valley Bank.
	Yeah, well it's now the second largest banking collapse of all times.
	Who are they?
	Well, they were a big Silicon Valley regional bank.
	So basically in America you've got the big four, the globally systemic important banks, that can't be allowed to fail.
	And then you've got a whole load of regional banks.
	And they were basically the big one in Silicon Valley and the big one in venture capital.
	So about half of all US venture capital firms bank there.
	Loads and loads of Silicon Valley firms bank there.
	So this isn't really big tech, this is small and medium tech in Silicon Valley.
	Is this connected to the Sam Bankman Freed thing?
	I mean, a bit.
	I mean, he probably had an account there, is the sort of thing that he would have done, and he would have... I mean, certainly people who dealt with him would have had an account there, so it was big for the Silicon Valley thing.
	But yeah, I mean, they had 200 billion in assets, so they were a... yeah, they were substantial.
	Not small fry.
	No, and they're on the S&P 500.
	They've collapsed, and so basically what I want to do in this segment is just break it down really super simple as to what happened in that.
	But before I do, it is worth talking about the bigger picture that we're in at the moment here.
	We are in a financial system which is being held together by duct tape, effectively, at this point.
	Now there's, I mean, there's a bit of history here.
	So there was the Asian financial crisis back in the late 90s.
	That was really the last opportunity for the financial system to rectify its problem honestly.
	And it didn't do that.
	And then we had the dot-com.
	And again, you know, you could have taken some pain then and flushed out all the issues.
	Just a quick thing, is this the Japanese collapse or something like that in the 90s?
	Yeah, that was the Asian financial crisis.
	It wasn't, well, I mean, yeah, to a lesser extent Japan, but yeah, those sort of Southeast Asian countries.
	And then, yeah, the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s.
	Yeah, and then rather than, again, take that honestly, what they did is they said, well, let's inflate a housing bubble to get us out of the dot-com crash.
	That was the advice.
	That was Paul Krugman who said, let's do that.
	And that led to 2008.
	And they were like, OK, well, we can either deal with this honestly by going through a bit of pain, or we can inflate a cheap money bubble.
	So they did that, right?
	Brilliant.
	Yeah.
	So they've engineered this into this situation.
	And actually, I do seriously recommend for anyone watching this, even the YouTubers, go to this link, right?
	We've got a free episode of Brokernomics.
	So I do a series every Tuesday called Brokernomics, where I break down the financial system.
	This one is on the site, and it's free.
	So you don't even have to pay £5 to get this one, even though you should pay £5, because it's not a lot of money.
	Seriously.
	And we are doing the Lord's work here.
	But anyway, go and watch this.
	It's one of our most popular videos.
	I've had top people in finance get in touch with me to say that this is the video that they send to their normie friends to explain how finance works.
	Brilliant.
	Seriously, go and check this out, and it will explain a lot of the background to a lot of the problems we're having now.
	But anyway, let's get into Silicon Valley.
	So, as the name implies, they are a Bay Area, in California, bank.
	They've been open for about 40 years now, and they have got like 30 offices around the US, although it's mainly clustered around Silicon Valley in California, and they do have other offices around the world as well.
	They were a well-recognized bank, so we've got this link here from Silicon Valley Bank.
	They're talking about how they're proud to have won America's Best Bank from Forbes, who don't have necessarily the best track record.
	Was that this year?
	So a couple of months ago.
	Oh yeah, yeah.
	Oh yeah, but there's a lot of stuff which happened recently.
	I mean, Jerome Powell, just like a week ago, was asked, right, so you're raising interest rates really rapidly.
	Is that going to cause any issues for the banks?
	And this week he said, nope, nope, can't see that causing any sort of a problem.
	And then literally a week later, well, one of America's best banks has just collapsed.
	Yeah, and like I say, it was used by a lot of Silicon Valley firms, so Roku, they had half a billion dollars on there, Circle apparently had three billion dollars on there, and loads and loads of the small and medium tech firms, they would have had loads of money in there.
	Anyway, so what basically led to this is that since that 2008 thing we talked about, the Fed decided they were just going to firehose money at everybody, right?
	And what that meant was all these financial institutions have now got all this money, so what are they going to do with it?
	And one of the things they did with it, quite heavily, was invest into tech.
	So in the early 2020s, we got this massive injection into tech and start-up and all that kind of stuff.
	And because they were the main bank in this area, they saw their deposits rise quite substantially.
	So I think at the beginning of 2020, they had something like $60 billion in assets.
	And in the space of about a year and a bit, they went from $60 to $200 billion under assets, right?
	OK.
	I'm starting to understand why Forbes were like, well, hey, this is looking optimistic.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And when you're a bank, if you're getting all these extra deposits in, you need to do something with them on the other side of your balance sheet.
	You need to go and invest them in something.
	But because we were in a bubble of cheap money, there wasn't really any good option to put their stuff into.
	So here's the really simple explanation of what happened.
	Their amount of deposits went up.
	And the only thing they could invest it in were US Treasury notes that weren't yielding very much at all.
	So they go out and they buy a whole bunch of 10-year... and they had to buy the 10-year because it was the only thing that had even a little bit of yield on it.
	So they buy these 10-year deposits and they've basically got a balance sheet that balances.
	They've got deposits on one side and they've got all these investments on the other side.
	So I mean, that's how a bank is supposed to run it.
	I mean, it sort of works, right?
	Then, because all this money had been injected into the system, you then start getting all this inflation.
	And the Biden regime is like screaming at the Fed, get this inflation under control.
	Now, they were the ones who made sure that this money got injected in the first place.
	They're the one who did the stimby checks.
	They're the one who did all of the... What are their options to control inflation if they've just pumped out all this free money that will obviously increase?
	Well, I mean, this is the thing.
	They do this bait-and-switch, right?
	So inflation is when they create a whole load more money, and then the price rises are the downstream effect of that.
	But what they do is they pretend that the downstream effects of the prices going up is the inflation, and they try and stop that.
	But it's not.
	The prices going up is just the consequence of having printed all this money.
	Yeah, because it's too much money competing for too few products.
	So having printed all this money, I mean, you can't stop the inflation because you've already printed the money.
	So you can put interest rates up to any number you like.
	It's not going to undo all that money printing that you've already done.
	I mean, you would have to somehow take it back from the people you gave it to, right?
	Yeah, I mean, they kind of do that through quantity tightening, but it's never going to be that much.
	I mean, it's basically the cat's out of the bag at this point.
	I imagine people are rather resentful about that as well.
	Yeah, well, I mean, it's going to get worse before it gets worse, so there is that as well.
	So they bought all these Treasury notes... It's going to get worse before it gets worse?
	Oh God, it's worse all the way!
	Sorry, go on.
	So they've got all these Treasury notes and they're yielding all this low amount, and then, because the Biden regime is screaming at them, get inflation under control, Even though they can't stop the money printing that's already been done, what they can do is basically strangle the economy, because if you lose your job, you can't go out and buy stuff, and therefore you can't manifest the price rises that they're worried about that makes it look bad.
	So they put the interest rates up.
	So that means that instead of being able to buy like 10-year notes at like half a percent or whatever, you can now buy two-year notes at like Four and a half, five percent.
	Right.
	So basically, I don't know if this works on camera, but basically they bought a shedload of these, right?
	And then you can buy these.
	Now, Karl, which of the two would you want to own?
	Well, now, so I'm no financial expert, but this seems that I'm going to get 4.5% back over two years.
	Or 0.5% back over ten years.
	Yeah.
	So you want this one, don't you?
	Well, I mean, as a financial illiterate, that's what I'd go for.
	Yeah, exactly.
	So basically, they had loads of these.
	Billions of them.
	Well, I can't remember how many they had, but at least 20 billion of these, right?
	And then these come along.
	So the value of these Drops.
	Right?
	Slightly less demand, though.
	Because you're going to want these instead of these, right?
	So, they had billions of this stuff on their balance sheet, so their balance sheet no longer balances, you see?
	Because now it's sort of a bit off, if they sell them.
	And on top of that, the guys in Silicon Valley, because this tech bubble is sort of dissipating now, they're not getting the follow-on rounds.
	So their balance sheet is increasingly not balancing.
	When you say follow-on rounds, you mean fewer investors looking to get free money?
	Yeah, so when the VCs put money into them, they normally don't put all of the money in.
	They say, we'll put enough money in to keep you going for the next two years, and we'll see what progress you make, and then if it looks like you're a winner, we'll put more in.
	So you get these follow-on rounds, and those are getting squeezed.
	So anyway, so, um, and they're supposed to put their money into these government-backed securities because, I mean, literally, you are taught at finance school that these are the safest investment possible, right?
	I've done finance exams where the correct answer is, these are the safest possible investments.
	Well, I mean, they're backed by governments, right?
	So, theoretically, they're going nowhere.
	Well, so they will never default, because they can basically just print the dollars to pay off your loan.
	But by printing those dollars, the value of those dollars goes down and down and down.
	So it's like that.
	And also, the regulators.
	So there's like this thing called Basel III, where they made them effectively buy this stuff.
	So this bank, did they do anything wrong?
	I mean, yeah, they did some things wrong, definitely.
	But they were pretty much doing what they were supposed to do.
	Were they put in an impossible position, is what you're saying?
	Yeah, kind of.
	They could have managed this situation better, but the situation they were in was the regulatory framework.
	It was the regime that was set up.
	It was what the Biden regime did.
	It was, I mean, all of these things.
	Basically, what I'm saying is there's going to be more of this, is kind of what I'm leading to.
	So anyway, so they start to realise this, And so a couple of things happen.
	I mean, first of all, the guys who work in the bank, they realise they've got a problem.
	So the chief financial officer a couple of weeks ago, he sells like 30% of his shares.
	Smart.
	The CEO, he sells like 10% of his shares because he probably realises he can't get away with selling too many.
	But he's thinking to himself, obviously, what's the most amount of shares that I can sell?
	How does it look if the guy who owns the bank dumps all the shares in the bank?
	Not great.
	And he realises he's got to get his balance sheet looking better.
	Because, I mean, it's still, actually, at this point, it's still fine.
	The good side of the balance sheet is still higher than the liability side.
	So it's fine, actually.
	But you can see a problem is starting to manifest.
	Yeah, the wind is blowing in the wrong direction.
	So he decides, I'm going to take 20 billion of these that aren't so good and put them into these things, right?
	Now, when you translate, because this is now down here, in order to get that into there you need to take a bit of a loss.
	So he sold 20 billion of these, right, to put them into here.
	And in doing so, by selling that 20 billion, he took a 2 billion loss on it.
	But he was going to recycle it into the new thing.
	And then he was going to make up the money by doing a bit of an equity raise, by going out to the market and saying, you know, buy more shares in our bank and, you know, that will top us up and that will balance it out, right?
	So then the financial analysts and the hedge funds, whose job it is to look at this stuff, notice that he's doing a raise.
	And they think, OK, let's dig.
	Let's have a proper look at this.
	And let's see what's going on, right?
	Right.
	And then they start to see, oh, hang on a minute.
	There could be a problem here.
	So what happens then is the financial analysts, they start telling, because let's say it's a financial analyst like, oh, no, Morgan Stanley or something.
	He's then going to do a flash note around to all his fund managers saying, if you hold any of this stock, consider reducing it or sell it outright or something.
	The hedge funds are looking at this and thinking, that's a good stock to short.
	So the share price starts to tumble.
	Right.
	Because there could be a problem.
	And it's better to be safe than sorry.
	Yes.
	Right.
	Then, the venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, they notice that this is happening, and they, I mean, they're smart cookies, so they understand that there is a potential problem, and even though they look at the bank, the balance sheet is balanced, they realize if everybody starts taking their money out, it's no longer balanced.
	So they think, I'll tell you what, I'm going to get my money out first.
	Let's play this clip, you'll see what I mean.
	So what we did yesterday, we were in numerous early stage companies, and I was sitting on the board of a couple of them.
	And the first call was, get the money out.
	And some of the resistance was, well, you know, they'll survive this, then they'll remember that we weren't there for them.
	And I said, you're not hearing me.
	Get the money out.
	And there was no resistance after that.
	Because it's not worth betting your company on.
	And if you take a look at Lehman, it took 14 years for the last person to get their money out and they weren't all made whole.
	So you need your operational capital at some place where you can access it.
	And you just can't risk the fortunes of the company or yourself if you're a founder.
	Right.
	So, I mean, absolutely right, and... I didn't hear any of that.
	Can you summarize it for me?
	So basically, it's the VC guy saying that he rang up all of his companies and told them to get their money out, because it's not worth losing your company over if everybody else does it.
	Now, that's absolutely correct.
	I mean, if I was still a VC and I was in this space, I would have told my investment companies exactly the same thing.
	Get your money out, right?
	So the CEOs of these tech companies, they start to get their money out.
	And then, what do they do?
	Well, they then tell their best friend that I've just done this, and then you tell your second best friend that you've done this.
	It's a kind of cascade effect.
	Yeah.
	So this is basically, you know toilet paper at the beginning of the pandemic?
	Yeah.
	It's basically like that, except with venture capital and Silicon Valley banks, right?
	So people start putting their money out, and then this happens.
	A line of about 50 people deep, waiting in the rain, trying to withdraw their money.
	They got no money.
	Instead, they were met with FDIC representatives who told them they can return on Monday and withdraw up to $250,000.
	We had more than $250,000 in this SVB.
	How concerned are you?
	Yeah, we had more than 250 in this, in SVB.
	How concerned are you?
	How worried is Paul?
	I am pretty concerned.
	Right.
	So...
	I couldn't hear that either.
	I could see the run on the bank.
	Yeah, it's a run on the bank and that guy's saying that he's got money in the bank and he's pretty concerned.
	So that guy is basically somebody's second best friend.
	Right.
	Because, obviously, you don't go and stand in bank queues these days.
	You do it on your phone or your laptop.
	You get the money out.
	And the only reason you queue up like those people are is because the app has said no.
	Right.
	And then you're like, oh shit, I'm going to go and stand in the rain.
	I'm going to try and get my money out.
	Because he reacted too slow.
	So the first guy that we saw, he was telling people on Wednesday, get your money out.
	And that guy's standing in the bank on Friday.
	Those two days makes a difference.
	And basically what happened is $40 billion of the $200 billion came out.
	So now the balance sheet does not balance.
	Well, and not only that, everyone must surely now be panicking.
	Oh yeah.
	Because, I mean, okay, you looked quite healthy two days ago, but if 40 billion, again, a quarter of your revenue suddenly disappears... Classic bankrupt, yeah.
	And the thing is, all the WhatsApp groups all over Silicon Valley are now alive with this thing.
	But it's amazing how this is just caused by people's flightiness.
	Yeah, but I mean, there was an underlying issue at the bank.
	But if people were like, oh, we'll just let it ride, it wouldn't have just cratered, right?
	Yeah, as long as everybody does that.
	But this is why it's rational, because that first guy, that first VC, He says to his company, I mean, he gets his own money out, and he says to his venture capital investees, he says, get your money out, and it's a rational thing to do, because let's say you're wrong, OK, you put the money back.
	Yeah, you've lost nothing.
	But if you're right, you've saved everything.
	So it's like classic prisoner's dilemma, basically, this thing.
	So yeah, and another thing is, well you didn't hear because your earpiece isn't working, but he was saying that you can only get $250,000 out.
	That's because the regulators in the US, they insure the first $250,000, and then anything after that you're on your own.
	the first 250,000 and then anything after that you're on your own.
	Right.
	Okay.
	98% of the deposit of this bank were over 250 because this is actually a, this is a bank for reasonably sophisticated investors.
	I mean, it is just a regional bank, but it happens to be in Silicon Valley.
	So therefore, 98% of the deposits are over 250 grand.
	That guy on there was basically saying that he's been told he can get only 250 out, right?
	And they were getting promissory notes for basically the rest of it.
	Right.
	And then some other interesting stuff happens.
	So some sharp types then start getting in touch with people like that guy and saying we'll buy your note off you for 90 cents on the dollar.
	Right.
	So if you've got 100 million in there, we give you 90 million now.
	You've got 90 million, we make 10 million when we get to cash it.
	If they get to cash it.
	So they're taking a risk for 10% or whatever it is.
	I've heard offers going down all the way to like 60 cents on the dollar over the weekend when this was getting really racy.
	But some of them did accept the 90 cents on the dollar, I know that much for a fact.
	How will I download it?
	I don't know.
	But anyway, this is a real problem.
	So I will say this to the viewers of this show, who are my second best friend.
	If you've got more than 250k in the bank in America, have a think about that.
	Have a think about how many banks you want to be in, whether you want to have it all in one bank.
	And if you're in the UK, and you've got more, I think for us it's only like 85k, something like that.
	So if you've got If anybody that I happen to know has more than 85k in a business bank account, have a word with me after the podcast, because you're only insured up to a certain amount.
	So over the weekend, all the banking analysts were then thinking, All right, okay.
	This has happened now to one of the largest regional banks, right?
	What's going to happen on Monday morning when this opens?
	So I bet you, over the weekend, all the banking analysts were not… I mean, they were in the office.
	They were doing this work on all of the other regional banks, right?
	And all the hedge funds, well, they would have been doing whatever hedge funds do.
	I mean, I'm just going to make up a story here.
	I don't know if this is true or not.
	I'm just making this up.
	You know, if you're the senior credit officer for one of these regional banks, you probably tried to take your dog for a walk on Sunday, and there was a bloke outside saying, oh mate, you've dropped your backpack.
	It's like, no, I didn't.
	He's like, yeah, yeah, you dropped your backpack.
	Oh, look, there's 50 grand in it.
	And it's like, oh, by the way, before I give this to you, how solvent is your bank?
	I'm not saying hedge funds do that, but some version of that would have been playing out all weekend because people, I mean, the market, I mean, as we film this, the markets are going to, well, I think they might have opened in the U. I don't know.
	I think New York Stock Exchange might be open by the time we start recording this, or maybe in like an hour or two or something.
	I thought it was three o'clock.
	Oh, it could.
	Yeah, it could be.
	It could be.
	I mean, they just had a daylight savings change, so it's throwing me off.
	Yeah, I'm not sure either, but it's fairly soon.
	It's fairly soon.
	The market's going to open.
	And basically, all the hedge funds and all the funds, they want to hit the ground running as soon as this takes off, OK?
	The Biden regime have not covered themselves in any glory on this.
	Because like I say, Jerome Powell, he was saying a week ago, there's no systemic risk.
	And if you remember, just a few days ago, Janet Yellen, the Treasury Secretary, she was in Ukraine.
	And so she was in Ukraine saying, whatever you need, We've got your back.
	We're going to cover you, right?
	And then this is going on here, and they're just not doing anything.
	So Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, this bank is going down, right?
	And the people in the know are screaming about this.
	There's a guy called David Sachs, he's like besties with Elon Musk, and he's a prominent venture capitalist.
	I mean, he's screaming about this stuff, right?
	And he's saying, look, if you don't do this, what you've done is you've created a two-tier banking system.
	Because why would you have your money in a regional bank Where you're only insured up to 250, you would go and put it in one of the big four.
	So he's saying, get a grip right now, otherwise the next bank's going to go down.
	Actually, let's skip over the David Rosenberg one, because I've talked past it.
	So then this happens, right?
	So on Sunday, Signature Bank So we just had the second largest bank failure ever on Friday.
	On Sunday, we get the third largest bank failure ever.
	Jesus Christ.
	Because a New York bank has just gone out.
	Because it's exactly the same thing.
	So all these people are thinking, right, so yeah, my bank's probably all right, but why take the risk?
	Yeah.
	So this is like flowing now.
	This is starting to build up steam.
	So that bank goes down.
	Because what will happen is everybody's doing wire transfers into the big four banks.
	You don't want that, right?
	Because you're probably thinking, what's the base position here?
	What's the libertarian position?
	And it's like, oh, just no bailouts for the banks.
	Yeah, fair enough.
	But the problem is, if you don't, basically you'll end up with only four banks in control of everything.
	And everyone loses a lot of money.
	Well, that as well, yeah.
	But four banks control everything, and then only four people need to get in a room to make a decision and say, right, from now on we're not banking conservatives.
	Or whatever it is, a very small number of people need to do this.
	So it probably was right to do a bailout, but when I say bailout, I mean take the equity tier to zero, so the management and the shareholders, they lose everything, but ensure the deposits.
	That's probably the right thing to do.
	And you don't necessarily even need to do it 100%.
	You could do it like 90 cents on the dollar or whatever.
	But basically you need to act fast, because otherwise everybody's going to bail out.
	And that's what happened on Sunday, as this next bank went down.
	So the Biden regime, they then figure out that they can no longer dither any longer.
	Oh, really?
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	So they announce, but they are going to be backstopping this stuff.
	And they are going to be doing the bailout that I described, which is like protecting the depositors, but not the rest of it.
	But here's the problem they've got.
	is there are something like 620 billion of unrealised losses on other balance sheets.
	So this bank, the Silicon Valley one, they had 20 billion of unrealised losses, but if you add up all the other banks it's 620.
	So it's like half of what we're sending to Ukraine.
	Yeah, it's a lot of money.
	So not only did they have to say, OK, well, we're backstopping this and backstopping the New York bank, but we're also going to open up a line of credit so these banks can sell us their underwater assets back at par.
	Which is going to cost them $620 billion.
	So if, like, Yellen and the Biden regime had been doing their job on Wednesday, or at least Thursday or Friday... This would only be $200 billion.
	Well, no, it wouldn't even be that.
	It'd be $18 billion.
	Because that's how much they were underwater.
	But because they dithered, it went from $18 to, like, $620.
	And to be fair, if they'd left it any longer, it would cost even more.
	Yeah.
	But, you know, that's the sort of situation… But this should have been day one.
	Yeah, well, it should have been day one.
	So there's a good film that I like.
	I'm going to shout out a film recommendation.
	It's Margin Call.
	So that is like the finance people's, like, favourite film about finance.
	Because what it is, it happens in a bank over the space of basically one night, where they realise they've got a problem.
	And they work through the problem over the night, and then they have to act fast.
	In finance, it's all about how fast you are.
	If you're one trading day faster than the next guy, you make like 90% of the money.
	Now, I'm not expecting the Biden regime to be that fast, but I mean, come on, they had like three days.
	It was quite obvious.
	I mean, it's bloody obvious to me, and I'm not even active in this.
	I'm just sat around on Twitter.
	I'm sure they've got incredibly experienced people who are looking at this and saying, well, this is what's happening.
	The problem is the banks employ smart people who are doers, and the regulators employ smart people with PhDs who do computer models.
	So they would have been spinning up their computer models and doing their academic-type stuff, but it's a different kind of thinking and it's too slow.
	So what's the fallout from this?
	Should you be worried?
	Technically no, because you're backstopped.
	But the problem is, is the whole world has just woken up to the fact that banks are like vulnerable, that you don't want to have more than 250 or 85 of you in the UK in any one particular bank.
	You want to spread it around.
	They've understood that there is sort of this systematic risk that could happen at any time.
	And I understand that as we started filming this at 1 UK time, I think it's 8 Eastern time that this goes out, that's when, or is it 9?
	Anyway, Biden is speaking as we're talking now, so he's currently laying out his response to this.
	Now there is a link that I sent John on, don't call it up yet John, but there's a link I sent John on Friday because there is a way of monitoring this.
	So there is an ETF that tracks those regional banks and it tracks the equity tier.
	So this is the bit that is going to get wiped out if this response isn't good enough.
	So this ETF is going to go to zero if there's like a complete collapse of the regional banks.
	Now, it was already down 5% on Friday.
	So we will call up in screen in just a second and we'll see whether the markets believe Biden or not.
	Because it was already down 5% on Friday.
	If people believe Biden, then it's free money.
	You know, it should be up, it will be green.
	And if it's down by anything more than like 1% or 2%, then basically markets are saying, Biden, you're full of shit.
	This is a bigger problem than you're admitting.
	Do you want to call it up, John?
	Let's see where we are.
	Down 6%.
	Yeah, that's not good.
	I mean, he's talking and the markets are saying, yeah, don't believe you.
	I mean, I suppose it could be worse.
	So he's obviously throwing money at it.
	But all the same, they don't believe him.
	So yeah, that's a worry.
	Keep an eye on that.
	And if that continues to go down, then we've got a bigger problem.
	And this is all we'll be talking about.
	But maybe whatever amount of money he's throwing at it will do it.
	Let's hope for the best, eh?
	God.
	Tell you what, it really makes what I'm about to talk about seem really, uh, trivial.
	Well, yeah, it's Western civilization and the future's woken, you know.
	Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong, I think that is important, but my god, man.
	Like, the Americans seem to be, uh, running their entire civilization on a knife edge.
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, it's all gonna come crashing down at some point, it's just a question of whether it's today or not.
	I just hope it's not today.
	Anyway, let's begin talking about Gary Lineker.
	He's a local black man who is a football commentator for Match of the Day on the BBC.
	And he has recently got himself into something... Now, you might be like, hang on a second, why'd you call him a local black man?
	I say, well, because last year he was like, look, everyone's racist to me in football because of my dark skin.
	Seriously?
	Yeah.
	I didn't know that.
	No, no one else did either because of course he doesn't have dark skin.
	He's even less black than Meghan Markle.
	I know.
	I know he's got mixed race ancestry or anything.
	But it doesn't matter because he's basically a virtue signaling fool who is trapped in the kind of what we call the Westminster bubble, which is the general progressive paradigm that almost all of the talking heads you'll see on TV.
	And Gary Lineker is one of them, and this is his attempt to become part of a victimised class.
	See, everyone was just racist against Gary Lineker, it turns out.
	But the point of all this is that Gary Lineker seems to have defeated the BBC over the issue of migrants, which we'll get to in a minute.
	Because it was the relevant subject of a recent Hangout I did with Beau, talking about how can we save England.
	Because it seems at this point that there is no positive narrative to our country.
	The only power, and this is why this segment I think is important, to show you the flow of power in this country, is not in the patriotic direction.
	It is only towards the external.
	It is to the minoritarian side.
	And even someone as pale-skinned as Gary Lineker is like, yeah, well, I'm a victim of racism.
	It shows you the power of minoritarian thinking in this country.
	Cause it's not just this, I mean he is, he has all of the fashionable left wing opinions.
	Yes.
	But I mean, it's not just him, it's like there's a whole set of, well you call it the Westminster bubble, but it's even bigger than that, cause he's not even in Westminster is he?
	He's just part of the... It's the sort of London central Rod Liddle calls it the Bean Present or whatever it is.
	I mean, it's just that whole class of current thing rich people.
	When I say Westminster, I don't mean necessarily government, but the sort of like five square mile around that area where the BBC are, where the House of Parliament are and all the other TV stations and various NGOs and institutions are all sort of centred in the very centre of London.
	They all have a very, very specific set of progressive opinions.
	And basically what Gary Lineker has done has led into them strongly, and he's come out of the other side as the winner.
	Which is good if you're an illegal Albanian people trafficker, because now you've got the rich and famous on your side.
	If you are a regular Englishman, well, now you're going to be paying for all of this.
	Because, like I say, he leans into every current thing issue.
	Pretty much.
	But the current current thing, at least in the UK, is this small boat issue.
	Yeah, so let's just talk about that very quickly, just so people who aren't aware can catch up.
	Last year there was a record number of illegal invaders coming across the channel.
	Don't know where they keep getting these dinghies from, but basically they sail out to about halfway point, where it's no longer French water.
	The French Navy will guide them on out, and then the British Navy goes and picks them up and brings them in.
	And that has been to the tune of 89,000 people in 2022, but there's a backlog because this isn't the first year this has been happening.
	So there are currently 166,000 people waiting on the decision from the Home Office about whether they can remain in this country after coming here illegally.
	Well, and I mean, we see them here in Swindon.
	There's like two hotels just down the road from here full of them.
	Well, in fact, let's go to the next one.
	Migrants are, as you say, housed everywhere.
	In 42 out of 48 English counties, we accommodate asylum seekers in the hotels.
	This is costing the Home Office £6 million a day.
	And so if you go to Migration Watch's link next, they assess it as being £1.3 billion a year in total.
	It's literally costing us billions to have a bunch of illegal immigrants living in four-star hotels at our expense.
	And we could have used that money to replace, say, the EU subsidies to farmers.
	Yeah, we could.
	But instead, we've used it on hotels.
	Yeah, I mean, subsidising the farmers seems like a worthy use of the money.
	Giving it to foreign adventurers doesn't.
	But what do I know, anyway?
	So we're just literally just urinating off the edge of a boat into the water.
	But the urine is money and the water is foreign pockets.
	For some reason, we're spending 500 million to build houses for Afghan and Ukraine migrants.
	So I guess they're here permanently, aren't they?
	I mean, literally.
	It's 500 million in total.
	Shropshire, for example, is 7.2 million for a bunch of houses for migrants.
	But this is 500 million for the whole country.
	So there's going to be houses popping up with what are essentially migrant council estates.
	But they've just steadfast refused for years to build houses for the native Brits?
	Yes.
	Not one single native Briton will have a house built for them, but loads of Afghan and Ukraine migrants will.
	Oh, this isn't going to stow up any resentment at all, is it?
	No, no, no.
	And the thing about these migrants is the reason I'm not calling them refugees is because I don't genuinely think they are refugees, at least the overwhelming majority.
	Now, there are going to be a small number from Ukraine who are actual refugees, because there's actually a war going on there.
	There will be a small number from Afghanistan who are actual refugees from being persecuted by the Taliban because they were collaborators with the Americans and the Brits.
	But that's a separate list.
	I mean, there is a whole process that you can go through in any country.
	And the Ukrainians that are coming here, they're not coming over on small boats.
	They're being flown over because they're going through the proper channel.
	Same with the Afghans who were brought back because of the departure of the Western powers.
	They didn't have to trek all the way to France and then get on a small boat.
	The people that I walk past on these hotels near us, none of them are Ukrainian.
	They're basically North African, aren't they?
	Many of them are, yeah.
	Many of them are sub-Saharan African, many of them are Middle Eastern.
	But zero of them are coming from war zones.
	So, one thing that they found in Sweden, where they also have a lot of refugees, is that 79% of them would vacation back in their home country.
	It's like, sorry, you fled persecution and war because you didn't want to be killed for being some sort of undesirable in your home country, but you just take a holiday back there.
	That seems dangerous.
	Well, I mean, this is what the current thing is doing.
	It is conflating people coming from a war zone with people who are obviously coming here for their economic benefits.
	They're benefit scroungers, basically.
	And then we covered the example the other day of a 28-year-old who decided to go out into the street and stab an 18-year-old through the lung because he wanted to get deported.
	That is not good.
	No, he wasn't happy with the amount of benefits we were giving him.
	He was just getting bored, because he'd been sat around reaping benefits.
	And he thought, what's the fastest way to get deported?
	Yeah.
	And so he stabbed a kid in the middle of the street, in the back.
	I know.
	It's unbelievable.
	But this is what's happening.
	And so finally, finally, after all of this, the Conservatives are like, you know, maybe we have to do something about this.
	Well, they say that they're going to do something.
	They haven't actually done anything yet.
	Be very clear.
	Very, very clear.
	They haven't and won't do anything about this.
	They've been talking about this for many months.
	You may remember the Rwanda plan.
	We're going to send them to Rwanda to be processed, and it turns out that the lefty human rights lawyers that Boris used to complain about so much just were like, yeah, but the law says no, so we're going to be like, we're getting paid to make sure that these scumbags get to stay here.
	And the Conservatives, still having a massive majority in Parliament, could just repeal the law.
	Oh yeah, they could have done it on day one.
	If they can lock us in our homes for two years, they could do this in a week if they wanted to.
	They could do it in a day.
	They could just repeal the law, replace it with something the lefty human rights lawyers can't exploit, and what's worse is the Conservatives have said they're going to do something like this.
	They've spoken, and yet here we are.
	And so now, Rishi Senak and Suella Braveman have put forward the... I can't remember the exact name of the bloody thing, but it's some sort of... It's the Small Boats Bill of some sort.
	The Anti-Illegal Immigration Act, or some stupid name like that.
	But the thing is, it's not going to matter because it's just going to get stopped in the courts, because the same laws that prevented them from enacting the Rwanda plan are still in place.
	And so, I mean... But a very short summary, the bill basically says, if you're going to come to this country, and loads and loads of you will, Do it in the legal fashion, and then we will take you.
	Yeah, that's all it says.
	I mean, yeah, literally, as you can see Rishi here saying, if you come to the UK illegally, you can't claim asylum, you can't benefit from our modern slavery protections, you can't make spurious human rights claims, you can't stay.
	Now, I mean, I would consider that to be the bare minimum.
	I love the way the Conservatives have framed it, though.
	Denied access to the UK's modern slavery system?
	Well, I certainly feel like I'm a slave to a modern system.
	And if you don't come legally, you'll get sent back to somewhere that's free.
	Anyway, so this seems like perfectly normal, sensible policymaking from what should have been something they did years ago, when this started happening.
	In almost every country in the world, this would be seen as below the minimum.
	Yeah, this would be seen as a massive dereliction of duty that it took three years for them to get to this point.
	But at least they're at this point.
	It's like, OK, that's a good start.
	And so we get the amazing take from Gary Lineker, a boomer, who makes the only take that a boomer is capable of making.
	Hang on a second.
	Something vaguely in favor of the native people of a country.
	Dan, what's that?
	Uh, is it gonna be Nazis?
	Yes, that's right, it's Nazism.
	Obviously that's Nazism.
	Not allowing, like, murderous illegal immigrants into your country is Nazism.
	Now, I'm not even making this up, like, there have been many cases, there was a chap who murdered a girl in Austria and somehow found sanctuary in this country.
	How did that happen?
	I mean, my understanding of history may be hazy, but I don't think the Jewish people were trying to get into Germany.
	No, no.
	Weirdly, it was actually they were preventing them from leaving.
	Yes.
	And they had to flee Germany.
	Yes.
	Flee.
	But as you say, there is only one lens which the boomers couldn't look at these things through.
	Yes, there are.
	There's literally the only lens, and anything I don't like is Nazism.
	Even if it's the absolute opposite of Nazism.
	The Nazis were like, look, we need to find a way of letting all of these Jews into Germany.
	Shut up.
	Shut up, Gary.
	So anyway, basically, he had seen on Twitter a video of Sweller Braverman explaining, look, actually, it's not right if the British people are taken advantage of by a bunch of Albanian people traffickers and, like, I'm finding it hard not to just call them pirates at this point, coming in and taking Taking advantage of the money and goodwill of the British people.
	And Gary Lineker was like, well, hang on a second.
	There's one thing I can't stand.
	It's not having the British people taken advantage of.
	And so I have to come out and say, no, no, this is quote, beyond awful.
	It is beyond awful if illegal immigrants aren't allowed to break into the country.
	I mean, and he is always pushing the edge of whatever fashion opinion is, but... Well, I mean, you're going to cover the BBC angle in a minute.
	Yeah, I am, yeah.
	Yeah.
	We'll get to how Gary Lineker is basically a weather vane for the current thing as well in a minute.
	So a bunch of people kicked back on him on this and he was like, well no, hang on a second.
	There is no huge influx of refugees.
	We've take far fewer refugees than other major European countries.
	So okay, but hey, that's their stupid fault, right?
	I mean, Germany did allow millions in.
	France did allow millions in.
	Yeah, and to be fair, the asylum rules do say that you should stop at the first safe country you come to.
	Actually, they don't.
	Oh, don't they?
	This is a common misconception.
	For some reason, you're just allowed to trek as long as you want to get the benefits package that you prefer.
	It turns out that I imagine that France and Germany are probably giving up fewer in benefits than we are, and that's why they're coming.
	Yeah, well, that would make sense as to why there's massive migrant camps on the north of France trying to get here.
	Yes, because the French are just like me.
	But the point, Gary, though, there is a massive influx, which is why we have 166,000 who have actually managed to break into the country just waiting on the government's list.
	And my swell of braveness is, look, millions more will come if we let them.
	And she's not wrong.
	At all.
	He says, this is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s.
	And I'm out of order?
	Yes, Gary, you are out of order to say that literally the government is run by the Nazi party.
	Because that's what you were saying with that statement.
	It's really nothing like it.
	These are not the most vulnerable.
	They are foreign adventurers looking for plunder.
	And are, occasionally, insanely violent.
	And you're expecting the British taxpayer to not only be okay with the complete erasure of the concept of a border to this country, but also to pay for the privilege of having no borders in this country.
	If you really believe in the most vulnerable angle, it's obviously not these fighting age young men.
	It's going to be the mother With four children whose husband was killed in an actual war who is doing it properly.
	She's not the one getting on the boat with their kids.
	They are all men in their 20s and 30s.
	And, I mean, any of the pictures that you'll see from the articles as we're going through of the men on the boats...
	You can see that they're men on the boat.
	That's why the mainstream news never uses the picture close-up.
	It's always a zoomed-out shot.
	Because you can't tell, because they're all, you know, they're huddled up, so you can't tell that they're all young men, because as soon as you look at any of the pictures, and they will go to great lengths as well to find the one child on the dinghy, and be like, oh look, ignore the fact that there are 30 people on this dinghy, and 29 of them are adult men.
	It's either zoomed out all the way, or zoomed in all the way.
	Exactly, to the one child that they've found to use as a human shield.
	But the point is that Gary Lineker believes a narrative that simply doesn't line up with reality, but it does line up with what he's been told by his filter bubble on Twitter.
	And what all of the people in the little Westminster bubble, the five square miles of Westminster, that he's speaking to, oh yeah, the poor refugees, poor refugees, poor refugees, that's all he hears, and so that's all he understands.
	Now, you get people like Lee Anderson, who's the deputy chairman of the Tory party, saying, think this, right, Brits have had enough of listening to Gary Lineker spout the latest trendy takes on politics.
	Just another example of how out of touch these overpaid stars are with the voting public.
	Instead of lecturing, he should stick to reading out the football scores and flogging crisps.
	Now, I mean, he's not wrong, and that's a very working-class take, but he's not, like I said, he's not wrong at all.
	Lineker used to be on £1.75 million, then there was a bit of a scandal because of the pay gap between men and women in the BBC, and so Lineker had his wages reduced to £1.35 million.
	Still, you can get by, can't you?
	He's still the highest paid.
	There's still a pay gap.
	I mean, I don't watch TV, but as I understand, all he does is he waits for somebody to score a goal, and he says, oh, look, they just scored a goal.
	Well, that is the summary of what he does, actually.
	We'll get to what he does in a second.
	So now, the Conservatives obviously came out and gave the most milquetoast, tepid response to being called the greatest evil that the British public can imagine, which is, it's not acceptable and disappointing to be called Nazis.
	Very vigorous.
	But this is for the BBC to deal with.
	You fund the BBC.
	You allocate their money, don't you?
	You get to decide what the regulations of the BBC are, because you're the government, and it's the British Broadcasting Corporation that we all have to pay for.
	And to be fair, those regulations are extremely clear.
	You must be politically neutral.
	It's in the Charter.
	We'll get to that.
	Suddenly, though, because the BBC were like, It's not entirely on that you are being so politically divisive.
	And Gary Lineker has fallen afoul of his own Twitter feed with regards to the BBC's impartiality guidelines before.
	So they said, right, OK, we're going to take you off of Match of the Day.
	And that caused everyone on the progressive left to say, well hang on a second, what about free speech?
	The best example I thought was Nicola Sturgeon.
	Scotland's First Minister tweeted, as a strong supporter of public service broadcasting, I want to be able to defend the BBC, but the decision to take Lineker off the air is indefensible.
	It is undermining free speech in the face of political pressure, and it always seems to be the right-wing pressure it caves to.
	Because those of us who aren't on the woke left, we are used to being banned and censored all the time.
	Have you ever been banned off Twitter, Karl?
	Ah, maybe.
	Once or twice.
	It's happened, yeah.
	But these guys, as soon as they get any pushback in their direction, they cannot handle it.
	Yeah.
	But I love this.
	The BBC always caves to right-wing pressure.
	Oh, I bet it does.
	What?
	Yeah.
	I mean, that's just not the lived experience of anyone who hasn't left wing.
	But suddenly, free speech matters when it's them being attacked by it.
	Now, they don't care about free speech for anyone else.
	Gary Lineker, Nicholas Sturgeon, they would all happily censor you if they had the power.
	And so, Gary Lineker got a lot of support from his fellow celebrities and football pundits and blah blah blah blah blah.
	And his son posted this, proud of the old man after a few busy days, shouldn't need to apologize for being a good person and standing by his word.
	Is that being a good person, is it?
	Demanding that we pay millions and millions more for foreign adventurers to come and live in our hotels?
	Intimidate school children as they go past?
	Because these people never experience pushback.
	Well, look where he is.
	Look at this picture.
	Just average picture of Gary Lineker and his son in some sort of, what, ballroom?
	An awards ceremony or something?
	It could be the Ivy, I don't know.
	Who knows?
	God, I've never been anywhere that fancy.
	Average football pundit, there.
	Doing good for the world.
	Totally in touch.
	Good grief.
	He's totally elite without realising it.
	Well, I think he must realise it when he's in a place like that.
	Well, he's the highest paid BBC star.
	He must realise that he's one of the elites.
	But, I mean, you get people on the other side, like, you know, this Jewish person who phoned up LBC, Nick Ferrari, and saying, look, I support Sweller-Braveman in making sure that illegal migrants don't just come to the country.
	Does that make me a Nazi?
	And, yes, that makes you a Nazi.
	Well done.
	You're a member of the Conservative Nazi Party now.
	And Gary Lineker was like, OK, you're going to have to delete the tweets, say the BBC.
	And Gary Lineker was like, no!
	a defiant I am defiant I will not delete the tweet and it's like okay and he started ignoring the BBC's calls now I just find this phenomenal because I would have thought that would have been okay well you're fired then I spent the weekend thinking he must be fired for this because he's just telling the BBC to do one yeah he is But no, he's entered into negotiations with the BBC, in fact.
	If you go to the next one, Gary Lineker said he will keep speaking for those with no voice.
	He's been totally defiant, and people are like, well, should he not be sacked then?
	Nope.
	As I said, though, he was taken off Match of the Day and a bunch of his fellow presenters went on strike with him.
	As the Guardian reported, it will be... See, I don't watch football or follow it in any way, shape or form, so I had to ask my dad, who's watched many, many hours of Match of the Day, which I think is on, like, Saturday or Sunday afternoons.
	I can't remember which one it is.
	But I remember as a kid, him having it on for hours on the afternoon.
	It's the kicky ball recap thing.
	Yeah, and I'm like, Dad, can we watch something good?
	He's like, no, go outside.
	And I was like, OK, fine, I'll go outside.
	So I had to have a life.
	But this time, instead of being like hours on a Sunday afternoon or whatever it is, it was only 20 minutes long, and it was actually the match highlights, without any commentary or music for some reason.
	It's like really, really, the guy couldn't even press play on the music.
	Alright, so it adopted a kind of funereal tone then?
	Well, kind of.
	I watched some of it, and actually it was just kind of like a YouTube compilation of like, you know, people scoring goals, right?
	And so you could hear the crowd cheering and things like that.
	So actually, it wasn't... So basically the same thing as it was before, but without Gary Lineker sat there saying, look, somebody's just scored a goal and being paid a million quid for it.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
	So it was fine, then?
	Well, yeah, we'll get into how people reacted to it, in fact.
	Because normally, Match of the Day gets 2.1 million viewers, but this week it got 2.6 million viewers.
	Now, it could well be that it's just the fact that everyone is talking politically about Match of the Day, so it's just raised awareness.
	It's a bunch of free advertising to get the half million extra viewers to go and watch it.
	What's weird is, I went on like... So, in Britain, if you want to measure the temperature of the public, or specific segments of the public, you have to go to specific places.
	Now, for example, if I went to the Sun, the Sun is probably condemning Gary Lineker of being unpatriotic, and therefore some readers are going to be like, no, I hate Gary Lineker, I'm not watching Match of the Day, I'm boycotting, right?
	Because the Sun is working class, bit more on the right.
	Yeah, working-class right-wing.
	And on the mirror image of the Sun is the Mirror, which is working-class left-wing.
	And so the Mirror kept posting pro-Gary Lineker stories.
	Yeah, because that's their messaging, isn't it?
	They're part of this, yeah.
	Exactly.
	And so I thought it would be interesting to just look at some of the top comments on their Facebook page.
	See what the readers thought.
	Claire says, not a football fan.
	I hate Saturday nights when it's on.
	Oh, Saturday it's on.
	As it's 60 minutes of continual waffle.
	Last night, 20 minutes, no waffle, so happy.
	The husband was happy as he got all the football highlights without the drivel.
	And happy me as it was 40 minutes shorter.
	Jan says, unpopular opinion.
	It's a better format with more action and less talk.
	Gordon says, I prefer it with no pundits.
	Their opinions are poor anyway.
	Gareth says, what a refreshing change from the usual drivel.
	The only people I know who do watch Match of the Day tell me that they fast-forward or pause or when... Yeah, well that's the thing.
	We were having a conversation about this in the office earlier.
	So I spoke to my dad about this.
	My dad was like, you know, I just wanted to watch the actual football highlights.
	I'm not really interested in that.
	Josh said that his dad always fast-forwards the talking and I've seen lots and lots of people anecdotally just saying, you know, I didn't... I don't like the...
	Well, my dad's main complaint is their bias, actually.
	Because, like we were saying earlier, the pundits themselves are biased towards, like, the sort of five or six top clubs, even though there are, like, 20 in the Premier League.
	So, like my dad was saying, he likes Southampton.
	And if Southampton beat Liverpool, it's always framed like Liverpool have, you know, bad day, rather than Southampton have glorious victory.
	Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly.
	So he was always annoyed by the overt bias of the presenters to their favourite clubs.
	I carried on the Facebook page.
	They shared a petition for Gary Lineker, which got over 100,000 supporters.
	But again, the comments were like, I won't be signing, sack him.
	Lineker is in a privileged position.
	He's not living in substandard housing, struggling to feed his children and live in a warm home.
	Yet we give money to the asylum seekers, rooms in hotels with money and food.
	Refugees are genuine enough, but who are these men who abandon their wives and kids to come here?
	Benefit tourists.
	We've always been daft enough to dole out money and health care to anyone except the people actually entitled to it.
	And those who have contributed to the wealth of this country, it's time to stop being mugs.
	Again, this isn't from the Mirror.
	This isn't the Daily Mail.
	I mean, Gary Lineker is the classic fashionable wealthy person's guy.
	Yes.
	But the rest of the country, they don't like him.
	No.
	Even on the left, they don't like him.
	Well, there are a bunch of them saying, I used to like Gary Lineker, but I think he's really become one of the elite.
	Yeah.
	Which is very true.
	So there's a lot of talk about Gary Lineker doing this to avoid his tax bill, because Gary Lineker has been claiming that he's a freelancer, and HMRC are claiming that Gary Lineker is actually employed by the BBC.
	He clearly is.
	Obviously is.
	Now, you would think this would be fairly self-evident, just judged on the nature of a contract, Yeah.
	But to make the case, Gary Lineker's tax lawyers are probably going to argue that his social media usage proves that he is a freelancer and not bound by BBC regulatory guidelines.
	Right, so he has to win this fight.
	He has to win this in order to get out of five million pounds of tax.
	Oh okay, I didn't see this angle.
	Yes, now that's the cynical Yeah.
	Take on this.
	I have no idea if that is the case or not.
	I mean, I do know that he does owe about five million in tax.
	One expert they spoke to on here, he'll have to produce evidence that shows he is a genuinely independent contractor.
	He's not controlled, not supervised, not effectively managed.
	Fundamentally, the test is if you do not have the service company in any way, blah, blah, blah.
	And so his Twitter account will be used as evidence that he doesn't have to pay this extra tax.
	Right, and this goes a long way to explaining why he wasn't going to back down even if it meant losing a one million quid salary.
	It does make you wonder right now.
	I can't confirm or deny that or anything like that.
	Because as other people have pointed out, Gary Lineker does kind of tend to sway with the current thing.
	Right.
	Whatever is the popular thing online at the moment, he kind of picks it up.
	You can get to the next one.
	Some people just like got, you know, Bing Corbin.
	Oh, well done, Boris.
	And it's like, so he's not like, he's just always like that weather vane, like wherever the popular views are.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Whatever, whatever's popular in the Westminster bubble, he just kind of leans that way.
	Right.
	Oh, he's an NPC.
	He doesn't have any opinion of himself.
	Oh yeah, he's a football pundit.
	Sorry.
	But anyway, so the BBC came out and were like, look, we're going to have a frank conversation with Gary Lineker after all of this.
	The BBC has impartiality guidelines.
	Gary Lineker is being spoken to.
	And they're really strict as well, these guidelines.
	They are.
	They're insanely strict.
	He's been spoken to, and we've spoken to him before.
	We're going to speak to him again.
	This is going to get resolved.
	What did they actually do?
	No disciplinary action.
	The BBC back to Gary Lineker over tweets comparing language.
	Boss of the broadcaster... So he won then?
	He won, yeah.
	He faced them down.
	Hang on, it gets worse.
	So not only is he not even getting a slap on the wrist, right?
	The BBC say, from our perspective, the situation has been resolved now and we want to get him back to what he's best at, which is being a brilliant sports presenter.
	Wow, that's cucked.
	Total victory.
	It's even worse, because the BBC are going to apologise to him.
	What?
	Oh no!
	Lineker will return to match of the day, presumably to tank the figures again.
	The BBC has also apologised for the episode and announced an independent review into its own social media usage guidelines.
	They are not putting the woke away.
	Total victory for Lineker.
	By just being a woke prick.
	Right.
	Do you want to hear Gary Lineker's tweets?
	Obviously.
	I think you're going to tell me anyway.
	He tweeted his victory laps, right?
	Lineker said, after a few surreal days, I'm delighted that we have navigated a way through this.
	I want to thank you all for the incredible support, particularly my colleagues at BBC Sport for a remarkable show of solidarity.
	Football is a team game, but their backing was overwhelming.
	Notice how he's framing this as if he is the authority in charge and the BBC would be.
	He kind of is.
	Well, that's the thing, isn't it?
	He says, I've been presenting sport in the BBC for three decades, and I'm immeasurably proud to work with the best and fairest broadcaster in the world.
	Can't wait to get back on the Match of the Day chair on Saturday.
	And actually, I might even see if I can, like, watch, see how he smugly enters into this, right?
	He says, a final thought.
	However difficult the last few days have been, it simply doesn't compare with having to flee your home from persecution or war to seek refuge in a land far away.
	It's heartwarming to have seen the empathy towards their plight from many of you.
	We remain a country of predominantly tolerant, welcoming and generous people.
	I wonder how many he has staying in his house.
	Well, zero.
	But is he in charge now or something?
	Well, evidently, yeah.
	Is, like, Gary Lineker in charge of just the country, is he?
	Like, Gary Lineker gets to decide what policy is, doesn't he?
	He bent the BBC to his will, who are operating under a strict charter, set down by government, and all of that got pushed back because he was just, like, defiant.
	No, I'm going to be woke.
	Yeah.
	He should have been fired.
	But it's not just the BBC that he's bending to as well.
	Well, yes, it's the government.
	They should now say, enforce the charter or you're gone.
	But no, Rishi Sunak's facing a rebellion because of this.
	What, from the Tories?
	Rishi Sunak's small boats bill could be, yeah, from the Conservatives, right?
	The Telegraph put this out on Saturday.
	"Rishi Sinek's small boats bill could be watered down by peers and centrist conservative MPs concerned over its modern slavery provisions," the Telegraph has been informed.
	"The Prime Minister is also facing possible rebellion from backbenchers with more liberal views on immigration if he fails to set out details providing additional safe and legal routes." So, the left gets what they want, and it's Gary Lineker who is going to make it happen.
	And the British public get to eat S. The Conservative Party, the only thing they can serve is Blair's legacy.
	Just extraordinary.
	It's amazing, isn't it?
	The Twitter bubble has got excited about something, and now the Conservatives are like, well, I guess we'd better back down.
	So the British public are not in favour of this.
	They're not being polled.
	Do you agree we'll abandon the concept of borders?
	I know how this poll would go.
	Yeah, exactly.
	So anyway, Gary Lineker is now King of Britain, and we are all going to be paying for illegal immigrants to live in five-star accommodation forever.
	Thanks, Gary.
	Prick.
	I've just got my council tax bill through as well, I'm furious.
	Alright, is it up a bit?
	You don't want to say the number, do you?
	It's too harrowing.
	It is, but Harry and Josh are going to cover this in a segment, I think.
	Because the council sent through a leaflet telling us the breakdown of it, and it's just... If you want to know why the American Revolution happened, Swindon Borough Council are going to explain to you why.
	But I'll let you go on!
	We've got a bit more of a fun third segment.
	We should have done this one first.
	Yeah, we should have done it.
	It would have cheered us up, shouldn't we?
	We're going to have a look at conspiracy theories and see if we can find any that are wrong.
	They've just been spoilers for the last couple of years, haven't they?
	So I thought we'd try and find one.
	And I'm going to push this one until we find something that we don't agree with.
	It doesn't matter how far we have to go, we're going to track one down, right?
	And look, the reason I'm doing this is because obviously for the last two years we've been told a set of things, and most of it was complete nonsense as we know now, and some of it is officially nonsense.
	So I'm thinking that the Mars thing, the Cochrane Review, that's pretty clear, but also the other one.
	Oh yeah, the Wuhan lab.
	I mean, you were getting banned off Facebook two years ago if you said that Covid came from a lab.
	Whereas now you're getting banned off Facebook if you say that it doesn't.
	I'm pretty sure you're still not allowed to say it.
	Really?
	On YouTube?
	Probably not.
	We won't take the risk, it's fine.
	In which case I disavow that bit then.
	It's fine, we won't put it on YouTube.
	Oh right, we can really let Richard know, can't we?
	Okay, we'll just censor the hell out of it and it'll just be bleeps everywhere.
	So anyway, there was even this study that I found.
	So this is a study from Sheffield University where they are trying to deconstruct the psychology of the poor unfortunate people who believe in conspiracy theories such as COVID-19 came from a lab.
	Okay, well, okay, yeah, that's good, okay, okay.
	And it is now the official position of the Department of Energy and the FBI that Covid came from a lab.
	And yet, you know, here's an academic study.
	How did the conspiracy theorists know?
	Yeah, exactly.
	So there is this absolute range of bloody nonsense.
	What's the next link?
	Oh, I've got to label.
	Oh yeah, this is the definition of conspiracy theory that I found on Wikipedia.
	A conspiracy theory is an explanation for any event or situation that differs what you are told by any left-wing media source, such as the BBC, CNN or MSNBC.
	Well, I mean, I agree with that.
	That's a great definition, but who hags that?
	Yeah, it is irrelevant how many times the official narrative is shown to have internal consistencies, is contradicted by your own lying eyes, or is later revised 180 degrees by the very same organisation solicited above.
	The only thing that matters is whatever we are telling you today is true and you are not allowed to question it.
	Right, so there we go, that's the definition of conspiracy theory on Wikipedia.
	If only!
	And the segment that I'm going to plug to go along with this one, it's quite a good one actually.
	So this is a Lotus Eaters article on deepfakes, mistrust in the media and conspiracies.
	So check that out, there's some good reading on that.
	Now, this segment was inspired by a tweet by Zuby.
	Has Zuby ever come on?
	Yeah, he's been on the show.
	Good luck Zuby!
	A friend of the show, Zuby, I thought he would be one of us, he did this tweet a couple of days ago which is like, what is the biggest media lies or, you know, former conspiracy theories of the last few years, and he lists out a couple then, and there's actually so many, and he did several of these, and then obviously loads and loads of people in the comments then started posting other, and you forget to get how many things that we were told was a conspiracy theory.
	And then a couple of years later, it's like, well, you know, actually it's- - God, there are a lot actually, aren't there? - Oh, and that, well, that's just the few.
	I mean, do you wanna scroll down a bit, John?
	And he's, yeah.
	And then, yeah, so I mean, he does two pages of it, but then the people below, I mean, it's just, there's dozens and dozens of them.
	So anyway, I thought that we would take a look at a couple and just bounce them around and see if we can find the one that we actually still believe in.
	So the first one I want to go to is...
	Is this one.
	Do you remember this?
	Did you see that film, 300?
	Yeah.
	So actually, King Leonidas, it was actually two different guys.
	Because the film makes it look like the events happened over the space for like a couple of weeks.
	Yeah.
	And actually it was over decades.
	Yeah.
	So the dude that pushed the other dude down the well was a different man to the one who actually fights at Thermopylae.
	Well, Sparta had two kings.
	Well, and also that was like 30 years before the battle.
	I don't think it was quite that long.
	No, it was definitely a long time.
	He was definitely a different man.
	It was a period of years.
	You don't need to fact check me on this bit.
	Sparta had two kings and Leonidas was the king who sacrificed himself.
	Okay, anyway, yeah, but, so that's the thing.
	The dude who pushed the dude down the well was a different guy.
	So that was, that was King, um, uh, Clemenins, or something I'm pronouncing.
	Cleonemies?
	That could be the one.
	Anyway, so, this, this is like, so what happened to King Cleonemies was, like, one of the first conspiracy theories.
	Right.
	Because he was, I mean, he upset the Senate, and he was found behind the Senate with his arms, legs, and head cut off.
	Oh, really?
	Yep.
	And then the Senate did an investigation into it, and ruled that it was a suicide.
	Ah, yeah.
	Right, so people who questioned... He had information on Hillary Clinton.
	People who said King Clemenes didn't kill himself, that was like one of the first conspiracy theories.
	Same with Romulus, to be honest.
	Romulus, the founder of Rome, became like a wild tyrant in his later years, and then suddenly disappeared and the Senate were like, yeah, well, I mean, the gods came down in a cloud and swifted him off to the heavens.
	If you didn't believe that...
	Well, that was an even earlier conspiracy though, possibly.
	So, are we going to say that we're on board with this conspiracy?
	That he didn't kill himself?
	Yeah, definitely, definitely.
	Right, so good.
	We've found one so far.
	The next one, the Great Reset.
	So, I mean, I wanted to find that clip of Mike... Every great conspiracy theory has a website.
	Yeah, exactly, it has a website.
	So I wanted to find that great YouTube clip of Mike Graham, where he's like saying, oh, I don't believe in the Great Reset, it's a conspiracy theory.
	Yeah, this is why Conor got in trouble.
	Yeah, exactly, that's why Conor got booted off of Talk Radio, because he pushed back on that.
	They've got a website, Mike.
	No, they don't.
	Yes, they literally have a bloody website.
	But we're not growing concrete here, Mike, for Christ's sake.
	So, I don't know why people think this is a conspiracy, but a lot of people think it is.
	They do it in front of cameras!
	You can go to the YouTube page of The Great Reset and watch hundreds of hours of them speaking on stage about The Great Reset.
	But ADL, which is the next link, they did this piece on The Great Reset conspiracy.
	They've got a picture of it!
	Literally from the World Economic Forum with the Great Reset on, like, listen to this conspiracy theory.
	Well, the way they phrase it, and the way they phrase it is important, so remember this wording, right?
	Since the first emerging of spring 2020, the Great Reset conspiracy has gained traction with the ongoing spread of COVID-19 in both mainstream and fringe circles alike.
	In its most current form, adherents warn, and listen to this bit, that the global elites will use the pandemic to advance their interests and push forward globalist plans.
	Okay?
	I mean, that sounds likely.
	Right.
	Here is the book!
	The Great Reset, written by Klaus Schwab.
	COVID-19!
	The Great Reset.
	Yeah, COVID-19, The Great Reset.
	Right, I'm going to turn to page 19, right?
	I've got this bit highlighted.
	Right, so the ADL is saying that it's a conspiracy theory if you think the global elites will use the pandemic to advance their interests.
	I'm going to read a bit out.
	The possibilities for change and the new world order are unlimited and only bound by our imagination.
	Right?
	And this is on page 19.
	You can look it up yourself.
	Next bit.
	We should take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity.
	What more do you need?
	So, um, so should we say that we, um, that we're on board with this conspiracy as well?
	Well, yeah.
	I mean, it's not a conspiracy.
	It's what they're really doing.
	Yeah, alright.
	So, yeah, fine.
	So we go with this one.
	Right, next one I've got.
	I mean, if they're the words, if they're any judgement, if Karl Schwab is any authority on what the World Economic Forum is doing with the Great Reset.
	Yeah.
	I mean, they're writing it down.
	Right, next one.
	One World Government, right?
	Okay, so I did this long thread.
	We won't bother digging into it now, but there's a bit I want to come back to, which is that bit.
	So, One World Government.
	So I did this tweet thread, I mean, ages ago, where I said – and I'm just going to quote myself now, because, you know, eminently quotable – Where I say groups like Bilderberg, Group on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission, have since their foundation been brazenly open that they seek a one world government and a single financial system.
	Now these organisations were expressly set up for that purpose.
	It is in their founding documents.
	We have been set up in order to achieve one world government.
	I read David Rockefeller's autobiography years ago.
	He just openly says it.
	He's got a chapter called Proud Internationalist.
	He's like, no, no, I'm an internationalist, I want a global government.
	It's like, oh, OK.
	Yeah.
	In fact, I'm going to quote from David Rock from that now, right?
	So, we are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine, and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promise of discretion for almost 40 years.
	It would have been impossible for us to develop our plans for the world if we had been subjected to the bright lights of publicity during those years.
	But its work is very much more sophisticated and prepared to march forward through a one-world government.
	The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.
	He's pretty open about it.
	Yeah, so he's open about it.
	They used to give UN speeches.
	They've had to be a bit more circumspect in recent years because people started to realise that this wasn't popular.
	So the bit that I want to highlight, can you go into that, the big white image there, John?
	Yeah, so this is a bit that I pulled up on my tweet thread.
	So they started to realise in about the sort of 2000s they had to be much more circumspect.
	And so this is them interviewing Dennis Healey, who is a member of whichever one it was, like Trilateral Commission or Bilderberg.
	And his quote is, to say we are striving for a one world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair, he says.
	Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn't go on fighting with each other for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless, so we felt a single community throughout the world would be a good thing.
	Now, the way I think about this is, I don't understand why this is a conspiracy theory.
	Because I can imagine, coming out of the Second World War, because all of these groups, they started in the 60s, right?
	Well, this is what the League of Nations is all about, the United Nations.
	I think that it is a respectable, I don't agree with it, but I think it's a respectable position to hold, that you think a one world government would solve a load of problems.
	Like I said, I don't agree with it, but I can imagine loads of people would hold that view.
	Well, they're thinking they'll prevent World War 3.
	Yeah, and so that's why I think it's a respectable opinion to hold, even if I don't agree with it.
	And you can see why they would, even if it's not mine.
	Exactly, exactly.
	But these days, if you say that the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group are trying to achieve a one world government, you're automatically labelled as a conspiracy theorist, even though that's what those groups were set up to do.
	We are expected to believe that even though those groups are set up for those reasons, that they've changed their minds and now they just continue to meet in secret every year because they like the food.
	Yeah.
	They just keep saying it in front of cameras and in their books.
	Well, they don't say it in front of cameras anymore.
	Not anymore.
	So for the last 20-odd years, they've been very quiet.
	And all we know is that a couple of representatives from the Tory party Keir Starmer, he's Trilateral Commission, so he goes along every year.
	All the top CEOs, I mean, Clinton's obviously, Bill Gates, all of these people, they go along to this dinner, these various dinners every year, and we just don't know what they talk about.
	All we know is that they used to talk about achieving a one-world government.
	But I'm sure these days they're talking about the latest Netflix series.
	Yeah, Match of the Day or something, that's what they're talking about.
	So where do we stand on this one?
	Are we on board with this one?
	I mean, it just seems self-evident.
	Yeah, right.
	Here's an easy one.
	I'm just going to skip over this one.
	Jeffrey Epstein.
	So, you know, he killed himself in a cell where two cameras failed on the exact same night as he killed himself.
	Oh, and by the way, the two guards that are normally on duty had to be subbed off.
	Yes.
	John, you work in cameras.
	How many times in 20 years have you had a camera fail on you?
	Oh, you've had a few times.
	Have you had two fail at the same time?
	Right.
	So, yeah.
	Yeah, but it's just so obviously sus.
	Yeah.
	Something like 60% of the American public don't think he killed himself.
	Yeah.
	Because they're not stupid.
	It's obvious, that one, right?
	Yeah.
	And the flip side of that is going to be just Lane Maxwell, right?
	So, who was convicted of sex trafficking to no one.
	Yes.
	And the judge sealed all the Epstein files.
	We don't need to know who's all implicated in whoever Epstein was trafficking children to.
	No one needs to know.
	And are you sure this one isn't going on YouTube?
	Yep, because I'm going to throw in Joe Biden getting 82 million votes.
	Most popular president of all time.
	Yes.
	Let's try really hard to find now one that we don't agree with.
	What about this one?
	Flat Earth.
	Flat Earth.
	Where are you on that one?
	Because I think that this one is a conspiracy inside a conspiracy.
	I think this is a bunch of middle-aged men who got bored, and they're seeing if they can convince us that they think it.
	So I actually looked into this a while ago, a few years ago, just to see what really lay at the bottom of it.
	Because I mean, like you can, you can literally put a camera on a balloon and send it up and you see the earth, like it looks flat, but then it starts curving.
	And so, I mean, that's obviously CGI, obviously.
	Yeah.
	But the thing that was underneath it, I watched a bunch of these Flat Earth channels, and one of them was like, look, we believe in a Flat Earth because we want to believe there's something better outside of the mundane world in which we live.
	And it's like, right, it's a kind of messianic thing.
	So, you know, beyond the ice rim or something, they think there might be another...
	But that's why I think it's a conspiracy inside a conspiracy.
	Because, for example, a week ago I stood with my five-year-old by the window and I was like, oh, the grass has turned white.
	It's like, no, Daddy, it's snow.
	It's like I sometimes pretend to be less intelligent than I am just to see if I can see that she knows that I'm joking.
	I think that's what these guys are doing.
	I think their conspiracy is that the public are bright enough to see through But they're just joshing with us, but people keep taking it seriously.
	So I think it's a conspiracy inside a conspiracy.
	I think there is a bit of that effect to it, yeah.
	Alright.
	Next one, Bigfoot.
	Now, obviously nobody believes in that, because that's bollocks, so we can just skip over that one, can't we?
	I'm not saying I believe in Bigfoot.
	I'm saying there's loads of evidence that Bigfoot exists.
	Why is there no pictures, though?
	There is!
	You're looking at a picture!
	How is that not a picture?
	It's not a very good one, though, is it?
	It could be a broken suit.
	Bigfoot isn't posing for a bloody photo shoot!
	I can't believe it!
	Yeah, but there's no... Why have we never found a... Okay, okay, question, right?
	Can you zoom in on the Bigfoot there?
	Zoom in more.
	More.
	Enhance!
	Right?
	I can't help but notice that whoever made that Bigfoot suit put a massive pair of knockers on it.
	Okay.
	Why, if you were going to fake Bigfoot, would you put big, hairy Bigfoot boobs on it?
	I don't know.
	Exactly!
	It doesn't make any sense!
	It's got massive jugs!
	Why?
	Like, guys, I'm going to persuade the world Bigfoot exists.
	Yeah, how you can do that with massive boobs?
	I don't know.
	I mean, I don't know if Bigfoot... I don't think there's anything that prevents there from being a, like, monkey or, you know, some sort of gorilla-style animal that lives in Canada in the wilds.
	I don't think that's impossible.
	And there's just so many people who have said they've seen something like it.
	So many.
	We've managed to find one that I don't believe in at least, so we're halfway there.
	I'm not saying I believe it, but I don't want to tell literally millions of people for hundreds of years that they're all a bunch of liars.
	Next one, what about aliens?
	Where are we on this one?
	Yeah, no aliens.
	Let's be clear, are you saying no aliens have visited us?
	Well, yeah, I mean, there might be, like, Amoeba a hundred million light years away or something.
	Right.
	Because, I mean, the universe is really big, so... Yeah.
	But there are no aliens visiting Earth.
	Yeah, I agree with you on that one.
	But alien civilizations out there somewhere?
	I mean, maybe, but we've got no proof of it.
	Yeah.
	And they're not coming here.
	Yeah, so they're not coming here, I agree with that bit.
	Right.
	Right, let's start to get a bit more spicy, shall we?
	9-11.
	I mean, I have questions!
	But how did World Trade Center 7 fall?
	Well, it went on fire, because that's what happened.
	When buildings go on fire, they fall down, don't they?
	They pancake, yeah.
	Yeah.
	I mean, it's the only building in history...
	to catch on fire and then just collapse.
	It is.
	I mean, well, apart from... well, yeah, I suppose.
	I mean... Buildings get on fire all the time and they don't collapse, but that one did.
	And then there's the whole Pentagon thing.
	It's like the day before they... what was it?
	Donald Rumsfeld was saying that they've got a couple of trillion missing.
	Yeah, and suddenly a plane hits the Pentagon.
	But don't worry about it, because what we're going to do is we're going to gather up all of the evidence and put it in one office in the Pentagon, and then we're going to have a good look at it, and then I'm not sure.
	Just by chance, that happened to be the bit of the Pentagon that went down.
	Yeah, I don't know, but I do have questions.
	Yeah, I mean, I honestly don't know where I stand on this one either, because, I mean, maybe it did, but on the other hand, there are so many really big questions that you just can't make up your mind on that one, right?
	Shall I hit the nuclear button now?
	Go on then.
	Go to the next one, John.
	Right.
	I'm a big fan of Stanley Kubrick, I don't know what you're talking about.
	The thing is, right, I used to be, two years ago, I was 99.9% sure that the moon landings happened.
	Right.
	And then, Covid happened, and I realised that governments are psychopaths, who are perfectly happy to kill people, lie to them, do psyops and all the rest of it, and just because of that, because of the government malfeasance, my faith in the moon landings went from like 99.9% to 90%.
	And I thought to myself, right, I want to get that 10% back.
	So I started looking into it, and it just kept dropping and dropping and dropping the more I looked into it.
	Because all of the arguments you hear as to why it definitely happened basically come down to because I've believed it all my life and it was on TV.
	Well, I don't have a firm position on this, to be honest.
	Because, like you say, it's entirely likely that they're just BSers.
	For me, it's the cynical side.
	So they're in a space race with the Russians.
	The Russians are pulling ahead, they've got the first man in orbit.
	So what are the Americans going to do?
	Oh, we're going to get the first man on the moon.
	Okay, that's going to cost billions.
	Yeah, it would, if we were really going to do it.
	Or we could fake it, and fake it, and make everyone believe that we've done it.
	Because Kennedy announced it, and then they achieved it within like six years or something.
	And it's like the first government program in history that was delivered on schedule, and everything worked first time.
	Exactly, exactly.
	And so, this is the thing, right?
	So, it's likely that there were secret attempts that we weren't told about.
	I'm pretty sure there was evidence that the Soviets had essentially done the same thing.
	They were trying to get men to the moon and it resulted in a bunch of deaths and they just covered it up.
	So it's entirely possible the Americans did something.
	Every time I look into this, the best evidence that I can find is, oh, we've got these reflectors on the moon.
	But the Chinese and the Russians have these reflectors on the moon as well.
	So that just proves that you've got a vehicle to the moon.
	It doesn't prove that men went with it.
	And then there's a whole bunch of stuff about radio telemetry about at the time you could track this, you could ping it, and you could see the signals coming from an object moving towards the moon.
	And it would have taken, and this is just like physics, it would have taken more energy to hold it in a stable orbit at that point than it would be to send a rocket.
	But again, that proves that a rocket went.
	It doesn't prove that there were actually anybody on it, or even that they landed.
	And that's taking the official narrative on FaceLap value.
	Because I mean, like, there are loads of videos of them that look like they're being held up by strings.
	Like, you know, the things that they fall over.
	Well, that's why I put this.
	So I went and bought a copy of this, which is the moon landings in 4K.
	So they took the original 35 film and they put it up in ultra high resolution.
	And this is supposed to sort of... And I watched it and I was like, oh, I've got to turn this off because I'm going to go lower than 60% if I keep watching this.
	If I watch their official propaganda, I'm not going to believe it.
	Yeah, because the stuff that looks like it's on the moon, you can't tell.
	You can't tell if it's a film studio or not.
	And the whole thing with it, they're supposed to be releasing all of that extra information.
	And basically, you get a few seconds of something that might be on the moon, and then it cuts back to the control town.
	It's a bunch of people in really bad suits, looking at each other and chewing pencils.
	Because you'd think they'd have dozens of hours of footage.
	It's literally broadcast live from the Moon.
	But also technical specifications.
	So space doesn't work the way that it works on Earth, because there's no atmosphere.
	So if you're in the Sun on the Moon... It's super hot.
	It's like 267 degrees, I think it is.
	And the argument is, oh yeah, they had an air conditioning unit on the capsule powered by batteries.
	And then people have subsequently said, OK, well, can we have the specifications?
	Oh, no, we lost them.
	Oh, did you?
	Can we have specifications for everything else?
	No, we've lost all of it.
	Oh, really?
	All of the technical specifications, you can't get them anymore.
	Because I recall watching one of the anti-moon landing documentaries, and they were like, look, the technology in your watch is more advanced than everything they had.
	The technology on your credit card, that little chip, is more powerful than the computer on this thing.
	Yeah.
	So it's just like, right, OK.
	And there was another thing as well, like the lander or something, you can't get access to it.
	It's just weird.
	Well that's why I might get pulled below 60% because that lander, right, so they were, was it Halliburton or whatever the arms company that was selling them, they were selling them for like 900 million dollars each and basically it's just a cut-down Jeep reorganised.
	So if you wanted to channel money, say politicians, let's say politicians wanted to take money, funnel it into the military-industrial complex, then maybe get some of that back again.
	Moon landing, a bloody fantastic way of doing it.
	It's also a really good way of filling up a CIA black pot of money somewhere.
	I mean, one way they can always just allay all their concerns is just rebuild it.
	Just, you know, just go again.
	Well, and that's the other thing that gets me, is when I hear Elon Musk talking about going to the moon, I mean, he doesn't say anything about...
	No, no.
	He doesn't say any of that.
	But when I hear him talk about it, it's like, OK, well, we can only do this, and then we need to refill here.
	It's like, what?
	With modern technology, you have to get into orbit and then refuel, and you can't do it otherwise?
	And a whole bunch of other stuff they talk about, about the technical challenges.
	Yeah.
	And they're saying, oh, it's cutting edge, and we're going to have to do it.
	It's like, hang on.
	Why don't you just use the original material?
	Yeah.
	It's like, this doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
	So I refuse to go below 50% on this one, because if you doubt this, then you are a proper wingnut, aren't you?
	I'm pretty sure, yeah.
	So I'm not going to allow myself to say that it didn't happen.
	I'm just saying that my level of certainty is not 100% anymore with this one.
	None of these are things that preoccupy me, but I am just generally very sceptical about the official narratives on everything in the 20th century now.
	Oh yeah, because governments are psychopaths and they have probably been lying about it.
	In fact, not just the 20th century, probably all of history is a psy-op of some sort or another.
	Who knows what's true?
	I mean, it literally is the case.
	All of history is a silo.
	Because whoever won got to set their narrative, and there may be some true points in it, but who knows.
	I don't care if they did or not.
	It's not something that bothers me, but I mean, again, I have questions.
	Big questions.
	Should we go to the comments?
	We can, but I can't hear them.
	Oh, okay.
	Well, I'll tell you if there's anything interesting.
	Go ahead.
	So I'm here with a safety PSA to own my own hypocrisy, because I will always advocate, use the correct tool for the job.
	But I didn't do that.
	I wanted to make this spearhead narrower, so I was going to saw off the end, but you can see where it kind of folds together.
	I started cutting through from the backside, and when it got to where that seam is, This happened.
	It tore the steel and kicked, and I got really lucky that it kicked my hand away from the saw and not into the saw.
	Don't lose your hand.
	Use the right tool for the right job.
	Yeah so basically he's making a spear tip and it kicked and it knocked his hand away from the saw as opposed to towards the saw but it was like a coin toss as to whether he lost his hand or not.
	So glad he didn't because otherwise if he was spending a large amount of money on the US medical system he might not be able to keep up his subscription.
	So really glad that he's okay.
	We've got another video?
	What's going on with banks?
	I'm sure Dan is on today or tomorrow.
	We will see how it goes by tomorrow.
	The ripple effect on crypto with Coinbase and USDC was scary.
	It was looking like Luna and FTX combined.
	I got out into other assets fast, but by some sheer dumb luck, at the time of recording I'm actually in profit, but overly exposed to the market.
	I hope I can safely exit the market into cash by this morning.
	Look for my comment under this video.
	This feels like 2007 all over again, but worse.
	SVB should have been allowed to fail.
	Yeah, so he's basically saying that I'm sure Dan's going to be over the Silicon Bank thing, which I am absolutely right.
	And he's talking about the crypto anger.
	That's one thing that I didn't touch on.
	So there were basically three banks in the US that were friendly to crypto.
	And there was Silvergate, there was Silicon Valley Bank, and there were First Principles.
	And all three of them got taken out in the same week.
	So again, conspiracy theory is that?
	Is that just a random coincidence that the three crypto-friendly banks are just deleted?
	Don't know.
	So I've had an epiphany.
	If the 80s taught me anything, it's that feminists are amazing at infiltrating and removing men's spaces.
	The turfs of this world, it's time for them to stand up, declare themselves men, and adopt the honourable pastime of female impersonation.
	And take those spaces.
	Well, he's basically saying up the feminists and they should take over the noble pastime of repressing women.
	Which is like the only thing they haven't done yet.
	Well that's what they're doing now!
	They're arriving at that position now.
	Not to give anything away, but the episode When We Are In Need features the struggle between the individual survivalists and a religious cult based on Christianity.
	From the outset, it is clear that this episode of The Last of Us was written by someone who does not understand Christianity and wishes to undermine it, but attacks on religion are generally made by people whose own moral failings and ambiguities are immediately described by those they cast in the religion they decry.
	For as much as low-seeders might think of themselves as irreligious, they should never become atheist or anti-christian, lest they devolve into unthinking socialists.
	So that was a guy just reminding us to pray, otherwise we might become commies.
	Good point.
	All right, and comments on... Yeah, I'll go through some comments.
	Comrade says, California IT sector is going to crash and burn.
	Don't threaten me with a good time.
	No, I don't think it's that simple, frankly.
	I don't think we can say that we're isolated or insulated from the effects of it.
	It's not the IT sector that's crashing and burning either, it's the banks.
	Yeah, I mean, there was that Ramaswamy or whatever he is, the Republican candidate, who was saying the best thing to do would be to let this bank fail, but then put in place a much higher deposit limit the following day, which would have the benefit of wiping out California without causing the contagion to spread.
	So I suppose there is a way that you could have done it, but yeah, it's a bit hairy.
	Omar says, banks themselves are the problem.
	If they weren't allowed to play with money fabricated from promises, bank runs would be literally impossible.
	Banking should be a service where money is stored and accounts charged for that storage or transfer.
	Yeah, but you're not allowed to have that.
	Are you not?
	Yeah, loads of people have tried to set up a bank that just protects money, and the banking regulators are like, no, you're not doing that, you're taking risks with it.
	Yeah, seriously.
	Seriously, if you try and set up a safe bank, the banking regulators will tell you, no, you have to gamble with it.
	This will undermine our entire grift.
	Well, yes!
	Yeah, that's why they tell them no.
	Yeah.
	Seriously.
	Bloody hell, okay.
	Lord Nerevar says, I don't know, man.
	Benarevar says, It's good to see there actually some substantial backlash against the bank trying shady stuff behind the scenes, sort of.
	Just further confirms to me that what Bo said during the hangout last week wasn't quite true.
	The normies can and are being woken up bit by bit.
	I don't know, man.
	I don't know how much the normies are paying attention to this.
	Hans Desert Rat says, Makes me wonder if we're heading towards another depression.
	It's happened several times and can happen again.
	I mean, probably, frankly.
	Oh, and apologies to DesertRat, because I'd spent the last few podcasts calling you Mr. Rat, and actually you're Mrs. Rat, I found out, so... Yeah, I know, I know.
	Radcheckwasright says, if your banking system fails when people panic and rush to pull their money, When people don't panic and calmly pull their money out because they're acting rationally on a sinking ship, then your system, pardon the pun, is banking on a narrow margin of people being stupid enough to trust modern banking, but not so stupid that they panic rush, pull all their cash and hurry to buy toilet paper.
	This was always going to fail.
	Exactly right.
	It's the system that is the problem.
	So even though Silicon Valley could have done better risk management and they could have hedged and they could use interest rate swaps, which was interestingly the thing that blew up Liz's Trust with the pension funds, even though they could have done that, it's still the system.
	And so this is still going to keep happening to more and more banks.
	It's just the trigger is the margin of what you, the bounds of fuck up is just getting narrower and narrower and narrower all the time.
	I mean, it's becoming more and more evident that banking is a service and you should pay for a service, right?
	Yeah.
	So, you know, it should be like a five or a month or whatever to be able to keep your money in this bank.
	Yeah.
	And everyone should have to pay it.
	But you're not allowed that.
	That's mad!
	Okay, fair enough.
	That is mad.
	Jan says, in the past year my EU bank has really become aggressive in trying to get me to take out a loan.
	I guess I should reduce the amount I have with them and take some money out.
	What impact do you think we can expect in the UK and Europe?
	Oh, God knows.
	I don't know what Biden said, I don't know what they're throwing at it, I don't know what that ETF is doing, but maybe this is contained, or maybe this is 2008 all over again.
	We'll find out in the next couple of weeks.
	Sophie says, thank you for covering this Dan, I was hoping to find out.
	God, you wouldn't want to have a teenage daughter in that place, would you?
	Have you heard about the plans to house 400 asylum seekers in the tiny Welsh village of just 1,500 people in North Wales?
	An hour from my house, and I've been to this little place.
	It's lovely.
	We're going to watch the collapse of this lovely little place in real time.
	The entire village is one small shop, one pub, and almost no public transport.
	I wonder what's going to happen.
	God, you wouldn't want to have a teenage daughter in that place, would you?
	Yeah.
	Sad.
	They're trying to do the same thing in some Yorkshire village, weren't they?
	They were trying to house 1,500 asylum seekers in some place.
	There's only like 500, 600 people in this village.
	So you literally triple the number of people in there with asylum seekers.
	Are you mental?
	It's an invasion.
	This happened in Germany.
	The Germans did this to some of their small towns.
	Obviously it went badly.
	Yeah.
	It's just, it's crazy.
	Oh, and by the way, the next one, Bass Tape, he's actually got quite a good YouTube channel.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I'm afraid we're out of time there.
	Sorry that I couldn't hear through my earpiece, video commenters.
	Dan had to explain everything he was saying.
	I don't know what happened and we... Oh yeah, I tripped over some wires.
	We'll fix it and it'll be working tomorrow.
	Thanks for joining us.

▲